Castle Chaos

Sometimes, multiplayer games can get away with more glaring flaws than single player ones, mainly because players are much more forgiving if they are having fun with friends. Hence, the occasional bug may annoy the gamers for a short while, but they forget all about it in a couple of minutes. On the other hand, that only works if the game in question is indeed fun.

Castle Chaos is a pretty unique game when it comes to gameplay mechanics and general idea, although it’s more like a mashup of a few other concepts. Hence, up to four players can wage war on a pixelated map, with the sole purpose being to destroy all the other castles. You can build cannons to attack and walls to defend, but there is much more to it than that.

You can only play it with other people, on the other hand, because there is no artificial intelligence included in the package. Since the only option is to use the same screen, you also need to make sure that you can split the keyboard four ways, or use controllers instead. As long as you are having fun, however, it’s not really important how comfortable you are.

There are three phases to each round: building walls, placing cannons and attacking the enemy. You receive random Tetris pieces to build your walls, which is obviously frustrating and difficult to achieve. To make matters worse, gnomes roam around the map and randomly plant bushes, which prevent you from placing walls. You can only have three cannons at once, and it is also possible to set up how many seconds to dedicate for each phase.

When it comes to the technical side of the game, everything is as basic as it gets, including the controls and the graphics. Besides the directional keys to move the cursor around, you only need to map two other keys. The graphics are simple and to the point, sporting a retro look and minimalistic themes. The maps are randomly generated every time you start a new game.

Although Castle Chaos loses its appeal after a couple of rounds, the developers are constantly adding more features, which means that it could turn into something quite decent over time. Hence, if you need something fun to do with your friends at the next gaming night, this can certainly fit on your list.